Bike & Boot
CNG Foodservice Equipment Limited
Bike & Boot is a new brand of leisure hotel, established by two industry stalwarts Simon Rhatigan, formerly MD at Le Manoir, and Simon Kershaw who’d worked for Whitbread Hotels division as well as in the wine industry.
Since establishing their management business they have held a series of management contracts with Hotels and venues. At each of these they have grown and refined the business, in one case turning a recurring annual loss into a 6 figure profit. At the same time looking for their first Bike and Boot Hotel, after several false starts they purchased the Mount Hotel in Scarborough in 2018 and set about the transformation.
The brief for the kitchen, buffet and bar was to design a facility that would be easy to operate, clean and maintain providing modern, tasty dishes prepared by one Chef and a support team possibly without catering experience.
They’d serve breakfast, lunch and dinner plus snacks through the day.
The menu would also need to satisfy guests who enjoyed an active life stye, as Bike and Boot suggests.
With clear plans to create a brand and roll out that brand, Scarborough would be the test bed and of course should be the blue print for future projects.
The bar should be long and easy to operate by one, to three staff, serving drinkers, diners and all wines, effectively the dispense bar as well.
Breakfast would be primarily self service, working with the interior designer CNG should design a buffet section.
Client Satisfaction
CNG are in regular contact with Bike and Boot with a number of new projects designed, developed from the Scarborough project. As the roll out takes place CNG are the nominated design house and supplier for Bike and Boot Hotels
Recently in conversation with Simon Rhatigan Clive was told that the new Chef and sous Chef had commented how well the kitchen worked it was easy to operate, efficient and easy to look after.
CNG, and Clive in particular, have played a major part with Simon and Simon on one of the new sites to protect the kitchen concept and design integrity from a developer who thought he knew better. His view was cut, cut ,cut to reduce cost, but with no view or understanding of how this business needs to operate.
Whilst there might have been savings on capital investment, there would have been on cost in operation and a number of constant operational challenges. That wouldn’t happen if they weren’t really satisfied with the design, the support, the service.
During the original design development Simon Rhatigan had doubted that The Bike & Boot would attract any none residents, in reality they have a good local following which Simon attributes in part to a kitchen that delivers what they required.
